Zena Elementary School will have Anna Brett as principal for four months (video)

Retired Kingston school district administrator Anna Brett will serve as Zena Elementary School's interim principal for the four months before it closes for good in June.

Brett, a former Chambers Elementary School principal and Kingston High School educator, will start at Zena on March 1, the day after current Principal Therese Higgins retires.

The Board of Education on Wednesday appointed Brett to lead Zena through June 30, when the Woodstock school will close along with Anna Devine Elementary School in Rifton and Sophie Finn Elementary School in Kingston as part of district Superintendent Paul Padalino's reconfiguration plan.

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Brett will be paid $600 per day as principal, pending state approval of a temporary waiver of a cap on how much a retired public employees can earn while drawing a pension.

According to her resume, Brett was the principal at Chambers from 1997 to 2008.

She spent the entire prior portion of her career in education at Kingston High School, serving as an assistant principal from 1988 to 1997, dean of students from 1984 to 1988 and a health teacher in grades 10 through 12 from 1973 to 1984.

Jill Aberle, president of the Zena school's Parent Teacher Association, was a student at the high school when Brett worked there. She described her former dean of students as a "phenomenal" educator and a "very straight-arrow kind of person."

Aberle expressed concern that Brett's appointment does not allow her to overlap with Higgins, but Padalino later told the school board that the administration is working on bringing Brett into the school sooner.

"There are several things we need to bring Ms. Brett in (earlier) to have her up to speed with Race to the Top initiatives, not to mention getting to know the faculty and staff," Padalino said.

Padalino said Brett will be responsible for final evaluations of staff, a procedure that has changed under the state's new teacher evaluation system.

The Board of Education accepted Higgins' retirement in October. Higgins has said the timing of her retirement was due to her plans to care for a sick relative.

Higgins became Zena's principal in the summer of 2007, succeeding Gale Aidala. Previously, she served as an assistant principal at the Kingston district's M. Clifford Miller Middle School in Lake Katrine for four years and as a middle-level educator in Rockland County and at private schools.